‘I said I’d come to talk to you about Rupert Friedman,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’
She didn’t respond to his question. Instead she said, ‘You were the copper that knicked Kinnear.’
‘One of them, yes.’
‘I remember you. You’ve got old.’
‘I’m retired now.’
‘So …’
‘I’m doing a favour for a friend.’ He didn’t think Alec would mind the appropriation. It was something he hoped would become fact anyway. He liked Alec Friedman.
‘A friend? What kind of favour?’
‘Rupert’s nephew. There are questions surrounding Rupert’s death that need clearing up.’
For the first time concern rather than academic curiosity showed in the woman’s eyes. Her eyes were almost green and her hair still quite blonde though he thought that these days it probably had a little help.
‘He had a heart attack. His solicitor called me.’
‘That’s correct, but, well … May I come in?’
She thought about it and then finally stood aside and let him through. The door opened straight into the living room. It was at the front of the house and the large bay he had seen from outside added unexpected space. A sofa, overloaded with bright cushions, had been set there, separate from the rest of the room in which the furniture circled around the twin foci of gas fire and television.
A small shelf of books settled in the space between the sofa and the wall on one side and a tiny table – he thought of Victorian plant stands – squeezed into the gap at the other end. He could see a mug had been set down there when he had knocked at her door. Steam rose, carrying the scent of coffee.
She saw him looking. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Thanks.’ He was already sloshing from too much tea drunk in the little café, but making him a drink would help to break the ice and give him a better chance to look around.
The kitchen was small, but very clean, leading off the living room and visible in its entirety from where he stood. Two closed doors he guessed led to bedroom and bathroom.
‘Sugar?’
‘Two, please. This is a nice flat.’
She handed him the coffee. ‘Yes. And now it’s mine.’
‘Rupert left it to you?’
She nodded. ‘There was some weird thing in the will,’ she added. ‘His nephew wasn’t to be told. He was getting the rest but this was a separate thing.’ She looked worried. ‘Does that mean he’s a greedy bastard and might want it back?’
Billy Pierce smiled and shook his head. ‘He’s already guessed most of this,’ he said. ‘Alec feels he’s already been given more than he could ever have expected.’
She wriggled her shoulders and crossed the room to retrieve her coffee. ‘Well, that’s all right then. Rupert always said this was my place. Rupert was good to us. All the way through he was good to us.’
‘Us?’
She indicted that he should sit down and he chose the chair closest to the television. She took the one opposite.
‘I have kids. Two of them. This flat was too cramped, really. I slept out here for years and they had the bedroom. But it was somewhere safe after … after Fred was killed.’
‘You rented from Rupert?’
‘Rented,’ she laughed. ‘I paid a pittance to him but I made sure I always paid.’
‘How did you meet?’
Elaine sipped her coffee and considered her response. Billy understood that he was going to get the expurgated version. He figured it would probably be enough.
‘After Fred died, Rupert turned up on my doorstep one day. Not here, of course, in the dump of a place we’d had to move to. Fred left us with nothing and the police were all over it. They thought he might have been in on it.’
‘Did you think he was?’
She shrugged. ‘I was never sure. We were flat broke, two kids, and his job barely covered the rent and heat. I worked behind a bar five nights a week while he minded the kids. It got so we passed in the hall. Anyway, we were broke and Christmas was coming and if he thought he could have got away with it … I suspected he might have passed on some information. Times they were due to do the pick up, that sort of thing. I was never sure and I never said. I figured he’d more than paid his dues and I wasn’t going to let his kids think he was anything but what he’d always been to them. A decent man and a good dad.’
‘And Rupert?’
‘Turned up on the doorstep. Said he’d been trying to track me down, that Fred had set up a life insurance and we were the beneficiaries. Rupert said he’d sold it to him.’
‘You knew he was lying?’
She shrugged. ‘Of course I did. Fred didn’t have two pennies to rub together, never mind cash to pay monthly for some policy he’d never have thought he might need. And Rupert as an insurance salesman? Pull the other one. But, he had all the paperwork and a big fat cheque and the promise of a monthly amount which would pay the rent and a good bit more and … so I chose to believe him.’
‘Rupert knew you doubted?’
She smiled. ‘Rupert knew, but we never broke our cover story. Not ever. Not even when we became friends. He was always the man who’d sold Fred the policy and I was always content to just let it ride.’
‘Did you ever wonder where the money came from?’
She was back into study mode now, examining him over the rim of her mug as she sipped her coffee.
‘Elaine, this is off the record. I have no authority to ask you now. If anyone asks me, I’ll keep your cover story going.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I wondered,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t want to know. I had kids to raise and the money helped but it was still hard. Occasionally I wondered if it might be from the robberies. I knew the money had never been recovered but, then again, I figured we were owed.’
‘And did you never wonder why Rupert had offered help? Did that not strike you as odd?’
She looked away and he knew that she had wondered many times. Perhaps she even knew. ‘He was an insurance salesman,’ she said at last. ‘I kept all the policy documents he gave me, all the insurance stuff he said I should hang on to. It has my husband’s name, his signature, it’s dated from six months before he died, that’s all I’ve ever needed to know.’
‘Rupert was a clever man. When did you move in here?’
‘About two, three years after Fred died. The place we were in was damp and Vicky, our eldest, had asthma. Rupert said he was moving away but didn’t want to sell the flat. He thought it might be a good investment in years to come. It was a bit small but, like I said, the girls slept through there and I had a sofa bed in here. It was warm and dry and the rent was so low I don’t know why he bothered.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘He’d taken to visiting us, once a month, the Tuesday closest to the fourth of the month. He carried on after he moved. He’d meet me for coffee somewhere.’
‘He didn’t come here?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘And you continued to meet?’
‘Right up ‘til the month he died. We’d meet in different places. He’d suggest somewhere and we’d both take the train. Have lunch, maybe go to the pictures. No strings, no romance, just two friends.’
‘Never any romance?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’d have liked … I mean it wasn’t that I didn’t think about it but, I got the impression there was someone else but that maybe she was married. No woman wants to play second fiddle, you know.’
‘I know. Elaine, did Sam Kinnear contact you?’
She scowled, her expression hardening and taking away the residual prettiness. ‘That bastard,’ she said. ‘Turned up one day, asking questions. He didn’t come here, he went to my daughter Vicky’s place. God knows how he found her.’